College admissions are an MMO (okay, partially offline too) contest, but instead of winning money, a significant portion of players win a mountain of debt. For a number of years, popular analysis decried the inequity of the SAT. Wealth corresponded highly with test prep and this skewed the SAT in favor of richer school districts and richer individual students. Additionally, there was concern that the subject matter of the SAT-the passages pulled for reading and writing comprehension-contained implicit bias towards experiences much more familiar to white suburban kids.
Recently, the analytical pendulum of public opinion has swung the other way. Yes, the SAT is an imperfect, uneven playing field, but compared to the rest of the college admissions process, it's downright meritocratic. Something like 40% of admitted Harvard students don't get in on an academic basis in the first place- athletes, donors' kids, and legacies. If wealth correlates with SAT scores, it correlates overwhelmingly more with bypassing any theoretically meritocratic system just straight up getting into college. Money + time contribute to SAT success. If you take it 3 times, your aggregate score is going to be higher than if you took it once-and this does require having $156, transportation to a testing facility, and 3 free weekends. On the other hand, straight-up buying your way into college might involve a million-dollar donation from your parents. While wealth is a factor in both situations, these are not operating on the same level of inequality.